Minority students are disproportionately hurt by Los Angeles’s subpar public school systems. The DSA’s refusal to challenge underperforming schools in minority neighborhoods is a testament to its role as a mouthpiece for failed public-sector unions such as the UTLA. Despite cannibalizing almost half the annual state budget, California’s schools fail their students miserably compared with other states, with test scores near the bottom nationally. Yet public schools remain dominated by teachers’ unions, and their overflowing coffers make them the most potent political force in California politics.
I’ve been criticised for unfavourably comparing American leftists to their Soviet (and Chinese for that matter) counterparts. In a rational world, these socialists worthies would want to imitate the state closest to their economic objectives, the Soviet Union. As someone who is familiar at least with the books they used, the Soviet educational system is far ahead of what these DSA types would have for us, as was their industrial base, something that’s paid off for Russia in its war with Ukraine.
But this isn’t a rational world (or at least not a rational country.) American leftists are utopian, to use the Marxist criticism of other leftists in Europe at the time. They’ve also abandoned the class-based dialectic of the Marxists in favour of the race and sexuality one they’re obsessed with. The result has been that those who are on the wrong end of the economic scale suffer, which is the major reason why Biden’s poll numbers are so deeply upside down.
The other thing that is driving the DSA’s agenda is the agenda of the teachers’ trade union, which has superseded that of student and teacher alike. That’s something that is going to be very difficult to fix.
Positive Infinity 